Zenith

The girls had taken on more high-profile jobs than that—like the time they kidnapped a rich Soleran’s mistress and left her on a meteor, the job requested by the man’s furious wife. She paid a pretty penny for their services. It wasn’t until days later that they found out the woman was not only a mistress, but a prominent politician’s daughter from Tenebris. The politician tore the galaxy apart looking for his daughter. When he eventually found her withered corpse on that barren rock, word got back about who put her there.

Andi screened their jobs much more carefully now. Her crew was still on the run from that politician to this day.

It could be he’d finally caught their scent. She closed her eyes. Black holes ablaze, she was screwed. The ship rumbled beneath her, almost as if in agreement.

“Cloaking is useless at this point,” Lira said as she readied the gears, slamming buttons, tapping in codes. “Engines are still too hot to go back into hyperspace. Damn their tech.”

In the distance, Andi could just barely make out the ghostly forms of their pursuers. They were still far out, but heading closer with each passing breath. “Get us out of this, and I’ll see to it that we get devices of the same caliber.”

“And bigger guns?” Lira asked, her blue eyes wide. “We’ll barely scrape by if we have to turn and fire on them. We only have one Big Bang left.”

Andi nodded. “Much bigger guns.”

“Well, then,” Lira said, a dangerous grin spreading across her face. “I think the stars may align for us, Captain. Any last words?”

Someone else had said that to her once, long ago. Before she escaped Arcardius, never to see her home planet again.

Andi chewed on her lip, and the memory fizzled away. She could have given her Second a thousand words, but instead she simply strapped herself in, turned in her seat and said, “Fly true, Lir.”

Lira nodded and took the ship’s wheel, her grip steady and practiced. “Fly true.”

A humming vibration filled the bay before the ship shot forward, like the tip of a crystal spear hurtling through the black expanse.

Chapter Two

ANDROMA

ON A GOOD DAY, the Marauder and her crew could lose a tail as fast as an Adhiran darowak could fly, but when Andi glanced at the radar, three little dots continued to blink back at her.

She suppressed a groan and tapped on the viewport in front of her. The glass melded, colors morphing to show a live image from their rear-cam.

Her stomach dropped to her toes.

The approaching ships were still behind them. Two black Explorers, angular and sharp, and in between, a giant Tracker ship. A monster in the sky that tore a memory from Andi’s mind.

A hundred pairs of polished Academy boots clacked on the ground of a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility in the sky. A rigid man in a royal blue suit stood before the crowd, announcing the specs of the new Tracker ship. Andi raised her hand, wincing as she disturbed a bruised rib from a fight, but she was hungry for knowledge, already in love with flying.

“I still can’t see a sigil on them,” Lira said, drawing Andi back to the present. The memory faded like mist. “We don’t know which planet they’ve hailed from yet.”

Andi leaned forward, sliding two fingers against her temple and linking with her crew’s channels. “We’ve got a tail, ladies.” She swallowed and cast a sideways glance at Lira, who sat calmly steering the ship. “Three of them, coming in from the rear. Get to your stations and prepare for immediate engagement. We’re going dark.” She switched the channel off and looked at Lira. “Ready?”

Lira nodded as Andi typed in the codes that would activate the Marauder’s outer shields.

The stars winked goodbye as the metal shields slid out from the belly of the glass ship, like hands wrapping them in darkness. Over and around, until only three viewports remained. One large for the pilot, and two small for the gunners, decks below.

“I warned you before the last job about leaving bodies behind,” Lira said suddenly, banking them left to avoid a cluster of space trash cartwheeling endlessly through the black. Her voice wasn’t harsh. And yet Andi still felt the painful truth of Lira’s words.

Blood trails were far easier to follow than any other. And after all these years of running, it was possible that the Patrolmen had finally caught up to them because of Andi.

“I had to kill him,” Andi said. “He almost shot Gilly. You know that, Lira.”

“The only thing I know for sure is that the ships behind us are closing in,” Lira said, glancing at the radar.

The patrol ships could have come from anywhere in the galaxy, but a nagging in Andi’s gut told her they hailed from Arcardius, the headquarters of the Unified Systems. A planet with cities made of glass and buildings towering on floating fragments of land in the sky, where military life reigned supreme and a pale-haired general ruled with an iron fist.

Home. Or at least it used to be.

After years of work, the Arcardian fleet had finally been rebuilt after the war against Xen Ptera, the capital planet of the Olen System.

These new ships were faster, better equipped.

Lira laughed. “It’s too bad we’ll have to miss their party.”

“Maybe that’s why they’re here,” Andi said. “To hand deliver our invitations.”

“They won’t catch us.” Lira dug her fingers into a metal cup soldered to the ship’s dash, the words I Visited Arcardius and All I Got Was This Stupid Cup inscribed on the side. Andi grimaced as Lira pulled out a hunk of Moon Chew and popped it into her mouth.

“That stuff can kill you, you know,” Andi said as the ship groaned and lurched. She was thrust sideways against her bindings as Lira quickly steered the ship to the right.

“I enjoy flirting with death.” Her Second smirked.

They fell silent as the Marauder soared on, Lira navigating the ship left and right, up and down, the tails trailing them as if this were a mere game of chase.

But this game they were playing rarely ended with laughter and fun. It would end with bodies burning in the sky, the air sucked from their lungs as they succumbed to the void of space.

Andi rapped her fingertips on the armrests. Her rouged nails looked tipped in blood, a playful nod to those who had given Andi her pirating name.

She was frustrated and hungry and, thanks to the nightmares, reaching a level of exhaustion that shouldn’t have been humanly possible to survive. Usually she would’ve been up for the challenge because, in Lira’s terms, she lived for the thrill of a life dangling on the edge of death.

But as she looked at Lira’s hands guiding the ship, a very different image took their place.

In her mind’s eye, Andi saw her old home’s moons, those beautiful orbs of red and blue beside Arcardius, the ice rings circling them like frozen guardians. She saw her younger, gloved hands, the Spectre sigil on them winking in the light as she clutched a traveler ship’s throttle. She felt the rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Then that fateful crash of fire and light, the screech of machinery and a girl’s piercing scream. And blood, rivers of it, drying on hot metal...

A voice buzzed into the pilot’s com system, and Andi flinched back into the present.

“What is it?” she barked.

Beside her, Lira punched the engine, the Marauder screaming as it rocketed forward.

“I got ’em comin’ in hot!” Breck shouted. Andi could imagine her gunner several decks below, lying flat before her massive hull gun. “Almost in my sights now. Can’t outrun ’em?”

“If we could, don’t you think we would have done so already?” Andi growled.

“Godstars, Andi.” Breck’s voice was deep and throaty. “I can see the sigil now. They’re Arcardian Patrol. We’re gonna be space bits.”

Andi tapped the rear-cam, zooming in as the ships gained speed. The exploding star of Arcardius stared back at her. Her insides turned to ice. There was only one reason they would have traveled so far from their domain.

So this was it, then. The enemy she’d run from all these years had finally found her.

Though dread threatened to freeze her insides, Andi straightened her spine and steeled herself. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Andi reached up and pressed her responder, ignoring Breck’s final words. “You girls in position?”

“Gilly’s on Harbinger, I’m on Calamity. Permission to engage?”

Andi smiled through her fear. “Granted.”

The channel fell silent, and then it was just the captain and her pilot, hearts racing in their throats, stars streaking past them like rips in the fabric of the universe.

And then Andi felt it.

The lurch.

The bump.

A knife of rage sliced through her. “Those bastards just shot at my ship.”

“Test fire?” Lira asked, but then she cursed, and suddenly they were spiraling to dodge blasts as the sensors screamed warnings. “On second thought...”

Andi gritted her teeth. Too many shots.

“Cap, they’re turning up the heat.”

This time the voice was Gilly’s. In the background, Andi could hear the familiar tick, tick, tick of Gilly’s gun firing from down below, the BOOM of Breck’s right after, one shot after another at the oncoming ships. “They’re closing in, starboard side.”

“Faster, Lira,” Andi growled.

She pulled up the radar and zoomed in on the other two blinking red dots, ignoring the shaking in her hands. They were growing ever closer, and now the Marauder’s prox alarms were blaring. What in the blazes were they using to run their ships?

Tick, tick, tick.

BOOM.

Shots blasted, piercing whines that shook Andi down to her bones.

It was all she could hear, all she could feel, louder and louder with each blast that sent the Marauder careening off course. She switched to the ship’s rear-cam again.

The three ships were directly behind them now. Two sleek black triangles with massive guns on their hulls, the other crisp and purple with smoke stains from Breck’s magnetic ammo, birdlike in its wingspan, with enough space to swallow Andi’s ship twice over.

The Tracker.

Her brain screamed stats about it—designed for speed rather than agility. She’d spent months studying the ship at the Academy, desperate to explore every inch of its well-designed insides. Even the best tech had its flaws, and if they weren’t also being chased by the two Explorers, they might’ve stood a chance against the Tracker. But truth be told, smaller ammunition wouldn’t be able to affect the reinforced siding. And with its dodging tech, they’d have one hell of a time hitting the beast with the Big Bang.

“Take them down!” Andi commanded. “Go faster, Lira.” She clenched the armrests, leaning forward as if her body could help her ship pick up speed.

“I’m trying,” Lira said. “We haven’t refueled in weeks, Andi. At this rate, we’ll burn out. We’ll have to lose them instead of outrun them.”

“But without the cloaking system, we’re flying loose as a...”

Lira stopped her with a sly grin. “I wasn’t talking about cloaking.”

She straightened the ship and gave the engines a final push. The ships behind them fell back as the darkness around them heightened, like something monstrous was blotting out the stars.

It was then that Memory, the Marauder’s mapping system, came on, a cool female voice that usually guided their path, a comfort in the void of space. But today, Memory’s words filled Andi with a cold, trembling dread.

Now approaching Gollanta.

“Starshine, Lir,” Andi said, the darkness approaching more quickly now. She remembered the last time they’d come through Gollanta—they almost became space junk that day. They’d tried to avoid the area ever since. “You can’t be serious.”

Lir raised a bare brow. “Have you no faith, Captain?”

It was death behind bars or death by the sweet black sky.

Andi loosed a breath and ran her fingers through the ends of her purple-and-white braid. It had been months since they’d made a good purse, and their stores were depleted. If they were going to escape, things would have to get a little dirty before the Marauders got away clean.

“Not at present,” Andi said.

“You always did know how to make a girl blush.” Lira grinned, her sharp canines flashing in the red lights of the prox alarm. “You should see the last ship I piloted.”

“Just do it...before I change my mind.” Andi tightened her harness, silenced the prox alarms and settled back as Lira navigated the Marauder toward the Gollanta Asteroid Belt. It was a massive expanse full of thousands of giant space rocks, tumbling endlessly, just waiting for a target to obliterate.

The Graveyard of the Galaxy.

The place where ships went to die.

The Marauder hurtled past an asteroid double its size, an ugly thing full of deep impact holes. Beside it, spinning slowly on its side, was a hunk of burned and blackened metal that looked like the hull of an old Rambler.

“Lir?” Andi asked. “What was it that happened to your last ship?”

Lira grimaced and popped another wad of Moon Chew. “We may have just passed it.”

“Godstars guide us,” Andi prayed. She glanced up. “Memory? Some accompaniment, please, as Lira tries not to fly us to our deaths.”

A moment later, music flooded the bridge. Strings and keys and the swelling feeling of peace, control and calm.

“I will never understand how you can listen to this stuff,” Lira muttered.

Andi closed her eyes as Lira gunned the engine and they slipped into the tumbling black abyss.

Chapter Three

KLAREN

Year Twelve

THE GIRL WAS BORN TO DIE.

In darkness she stood with her palms pressed to the cold glass of her tower. She was alone, protected as all of the Yielded were, staring out at the Conduit below. Swirls of black and silver and blue. An endless, starlit sea.

Each morning, she found herself here before the sun rose, imagining what it would feel like to touch the abyss. To feel the freedom of a single day where she could make her own choices, choose her own steps, one delicate moment at a time.

Her palms slid from the glass.

It was a gift, this body. A way to change her world, and the others beyond.

As the girl stood there, she thought of her dreams. Nameless faces, uncertain futures, deaths she couldn’t stop, births she had predicted before the dawning of their times.

The Yielded were special.

The Yielded were loved.

Outside, the darkness shifted. The girl gasped and pressed her hands back to the glass, heart racing as she waited.

It began slowly. A flicker on the dark horizon, far beyond the swirling Conduit. A flame, fighting for life. Then it sprung forth, veins of crimson light stretching into the sky, spreading to yellow, orange, pink the color of laughing cheeks.

The girl smiled.

It was a new act. Something she’d only just begun to discover how to do.

She loved the way it made people listen to her. Loved the way it made their minds seem to bow in her midst.

If her dreams were true, then someday she would use this smile for greatness. For glory. For the hope of her people.

Today she stood watching, far above the Conduit, as the red sun rose.

Chapter Four

DEX

THEY FLEW LIKE demons sprung from a pit of fire.

Whoever the pilot was, she had one hell of a handle on the Marauder. Leave it to the Bloody Baroness to get the best of the best. Memories of their history together tried to spring their way forward, but he quickly suppressed them, knowing such thoughts and feelings would only stand in the way of his big payday. This was a job, not a social call.

“Androma Racella.” Dex tested her name on his tongue. “I’ve been searching for you for quite some time.”

Two months, to be exact. The longest Dex had ever spent trying to capture someone on the run. He’d been to countless planets in search of her and gotten lost for two weeks inside the Dyllutos Nebula before eventually picking up a blood trail that stretched from one end of Mirabel to the next.

Now he sat on the bridge of an Arcardian Tracker ship, the flashes of fired shots illuminating his face.

Also leave it to the Bloody Baroness to force me to work with the Arcardian Patrolmen, Dex thought as he stared at her image on the holo before him.

In his hands sat a document that included all the information about the Marauder’s captain, including a snapshot of her face. The photograph had been taken by Dex himself when he’d almost caught up to Androma on TZ-5 last week. Unfortunately, she’d disappeared before he could reach her.

She was standing in the shadows of a pleasure palace, a cyborg dancing in the window behind her. Androma’s pale, ghostlike hair was now streaked with purple and peeked out from beneath a black hood pulled low over her face. He could just barely make out her gray eyes and the smooth metallic plates on her cheekbones, a defensive body mod she’d had done years before. But he could certainly see the rest of her: perfect curves beneath a sleek, skintight leather bodysuit, the hilt of a knife sticking out from her black boots. And, of course, outside the hooded cape, her trademark glowing swords were strapped across her back like an X of death.

The ship rumbled from a weapon blast, and the screen flew from Dex’s fingertips, the holo winking out.

“Blazing hell!” he cursed as the ground seemed to fall out from underneath him, then shifted sideways until he was practically dangling from his harness. “Settle her!” he shouted to the pilot.

His borrowed crew scrambled to control the ship as Dex clutched the armrests, gritting his teeth. A little mechanic droid wrapped its hooked arms around Dex’s ankle, squealing as it tried in vain to stay in one place.

Dex growled and shook it away. What good was being the captain when you couldn’t get your crew to do anything worthwhile? And he didn’t even want to think about the Tracker they were flying. Dex swallowed his revulsion.

Here I am, the ship seemed to say. Large and in charge and as undercover as a Xen Pterran carriage slug.

They’d never catch the Marauder. Not like this.

The Tracker was fast, but the “seasoned pilot” General Cortas had provided for this mission had no style. A starship was meant to fly weightless, limitless and free.

Just like the one they were pursuing now, its belly full of lying, cheating lady thieves.

He stared out the viewport, past the laughable pilot and copilot, their heads pressed together as they tried in vain to discover a way to outsmart their prey.

The Marauder.

Dex could see her tail up ahead. Each blast of gunfire illuminated her outline.

A sleek, beautiful beast that looked to be made of the stars in which it swam. Deadly and delicious, all varillium glass in the shape of an arrowhead, now concealed by metal shields to protect it during the chase. The Aero Class ship was one of a kind.

He’d catch that damned ship and finally reclaim it for his own. And when he captured Androma, he’d bring her to her knees, get her to agree to his employer’s terms...

“Sir.” A trembling voice pulled Dex from his thoughts. He looked up at the youngest Patrolman on the ship, a boy no older than fifteen with slitted reptilian nostrils. A boy who’d never seen battle. Who didn’t know the feeling of blood on scarred hands. His glowing yellow eyes were wide as he spoke. “They’re making an interesting move.”

“What move?” Dex sighed. “Use your words.”

“It seems they’re charting a course for the asteroid belt.”

“As I said they would,” Dex snapped.

“What should we do?” the boy asked timidly as he took a step back, sensing Dex’s imminent explosion of outrage.

The ship rumbled.

The pilot cursed.

Dex pressed a palm to the bridge of his nose. “You,” he said, glaring at the youngling between his fingers, “will do yourself a favor and go to the passenger bay so you can crap your pants in private. I can smell your fear from here.”

The boy tripped over his own webbed feet as he raced from Dex’s view.

“The rest of you,” Dex said, unbuckling his harness and standing up from his seat, voice rising to a roar, “will catch me that damned ship!”

The glory of his rage was lost in another explosion.

This time, it was so bright and so loud that it lit up the skies. A lurch resonated all around him as the ship went sideways. The little mech droid tumbled past.

“Engine one has been hit!” the pilot yelped.

A lucky shot.

Dex’s temper rose as he unclasped his harness and toppled against the metal siding. This job was the answer. It was everything. It could make or break his career.

And if Dex lost this opportunity now, when his prey was so close, General Cortas would have someone pulverize him when they docked back at Averia—and then Dex would be sipping from a straw for the rest of his life.

Enough was enough.

Dex raced forward, boots clacking on the grated floor.

The pilot looked up as Dex hovered over him, leather gloves squealing with each shift of the wheel.

“Move,” he commanded.

“Sir, I am under direct orders from General Cortas to...”

Dex squeezed his fists. The pilot flinched back as four crimson triangular blades sprung out of each of Dex’s gloves, just over his knuckles. “Move over.”

The pilot stumbled as he leaped from his chair.

Dex took the throttle, his bladed knuckles shining as another streak of gunfire shot past. He could hear a commotion in the background, the sound of the pilot’s whining voice as he commed the general. Pathetic tattletale. Dex blocked it all out as he tapped on the screen, losing himself in the motions he’d grown so used to.

This was where he belonged, in the pilot’s chair. Behind the throttle of his own ship.

The copilot, a man covered in purple spikes, stared at Dex openmouthed. “You were right,” he said, his massive canines visible. “They’re heading for Gollanta.”

Of course I’m right, Dex wanted to say. Androma always runs until she finds a place to hide.

Through the viewport, Dex caught a perfect, shining glimpse of the Marauder, its jagged, dagger-like shape heading right into the mouth of hell.

“Alert the fleet near Solera,” Dex said as he angled the Tracker to follow them. Solera was the closest planet, just on the outskirts of the asteroid belt. They could make it in time to intercept the Marauder if they sent their fastest ships.

“Alert them of what, sir?” the copilot asked.

Dex sighed. “They need to meet us in the center of the belt. Cloaked.” If he was wrong, well, he was already under the general’s control. He may as well use it to his advantage. “Tell them the Marauder is heading their way.”

Dex closed his eyes and allowed himself to hope. Then he begged the Godstars that his last-minute plan would fall into place.

Androma was good at what she did. But so was Dex.

And a protégée could only outrun her master for so long.

Chapter Five

ANDROMA

GOLLANTA.

A world of space rocks dancing around them with death knocking at every viewport.

Andi stared out at them, her eyes wide and bright against the dimness of space. Darkness surrounded them, lit only by the faint shine of Tavina’s distant stars. And, of course, the telltale flashes of the three ships still trailing them.

She’d make them regret coming after the Bloody Baroness. It was time to end this.

Andi turned on her com. “Breck, Gilly.” The permanent lens in her eye, activated by a light tap to her temple, allowed her to patch into another crew member’s visual feed.

They’d installed them months ago, and the blessed coms had saved their skins several times over. They were well worth the expensive visit to the shady doctor on the satellite city near Solera.